Whatever happened to the young man's heart? Swallowed by pain as he slowly fell apart...
As I've mentioned before, I'm working on rebuilding my 90's music collection. A rather mundane task, at least on the surface. However, the more I get into this project, the more I'm finding it bringing up old feelings and ghosts that I can't quite place. For instance, I was just listening to STP's Big Empty and felt this wave of nostalgia wash over me, but I couldn't figure out what event I was associating it with. I know it involved me listening to the song on headphones and it seems like it had been on a cassette player, but that's all I can figure out. Similarly, Live's Secret Samadhi album reminds me of an evening in late 1997 spent at the church at 67th and Leavenworth Rd. We were there for a Cub Scout function for my brother and as the night wore on and became more of a social function, I ended up wandering outside and sitting atop the slide they had out back, staring up at the stars. I remember mulling over standard 16 year-old boy issues of my place in the world, trying to understand the functions of my heart and the emotions I didn't quite understand. Hearing their song Lightning Crashes brings Bobbi to mind instantly. Local H's Bound For The Floor reminds me of the summer of '98 and working at Lakeside Speedway. The list goes on and on.
I made a point to stop associating songs with people and events in late 1998, hoping to keep myself from letting songs I like hurt me emotionally. Sure, I might hear a song and note the similarity between it and my own life, but I've deliberately tried not to create those mental relationships. There were too many songs that I liked that I couldn't listen to anymore without flashes of this or that and I refused to let myself be ruled by fickle emotions. An occasional song slipped through the cracks, but my attempts were mostly successful. Now that I've started to dredge up the music of my early teens though, I find my brain automatically sifting through the rubble and finding those old associations. So far it's been ok, but I suspect I'll dig something up that'll hurt sooner or later.
Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to not be me.
hungry